


Every Time A Bell Rings

by psalmoflife



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, It's a Wonderful Life, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-04 12:29:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psalmoflife/pseuds/psalmoflife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Phil is badly injured, he must decide if he wants to fight for his life. To help with his decision, an angel shows him what the world would be like without him in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Time A Bell Rings

**Author's Note:**

> For Feelstide prompt #85: Avengers twist to "It's a Wonderful Life" - One of the Avengers or Phil is injured/on the brink of death (no suicide attempt please) and is visited by a spirit that shows them just why they should fight to stay alive.
> 
> If you haven't seen the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life" is about a man contemplating suicide so his family can have his life insurance policy. An angel shows him what the world would be like if he'd never been born, causing him to change his mind. Since the prompter requested no suicide, I changed the circumstances a bit.

It’s six months after he was stabbed through the chest, and Phil is… struggling. 

He’s finally been released from the hospital and allowed to go home (although home is now the tower, since his apartment was destroyed by one of the Chitauri ships), and his physical therapy has been reduced from multiple sessions every day with the trainers to a handful of exercises and stretches that he can do at home, with regular check-ins with SHIELD Medical. 

It’s far from the first time he’s been injured, but this is definitely the longest recovery he’s ever had to go through, in part because of the severity of the injury but also because of his age. He’s getting older, and it’s hard to do so gracefully when living with a team of superheroes who are all in peak physical condition. Hell, at this point Phil feels like he would lose a foot race to Dum-E. 

He knows that Nick had been scheming from the beginning to have Phil be the Avengers handler, and that Phil living in the tower should be the high point of his SHIELD career, but he can’t help feeling unnecessary. The team vacillates between aloof and overly solicitous, genuinely concerned for his well-being but still smarting at the deception involved in his “death.” It’s not particularly surprising from Steve or Bruce, who don’t know him that well, or from Tony or Thor, always mercurial in their moods, but from Clint and Natasha… he knows that they have a right to their space, knows that they are both recovering from Loki themselves and don’t deserve to be burdened with his problems, too, but some days he really can’t believe that Strike Team Delta is living together without actually _living_ together, ignoring each other but for the occasional nod in the hallway. 

(He’d thought for a long time that Clint and Natasha were spending a lot of time together, had maybe gone back to sleeping together, but according to Nat she’s not seeing much of Clint, these days. She says that he needs his space, and Phil doesn't disagree.) 

Living in the tower is much more convenient and pampered than his life Before Loki, but Phil started doing his own grocery shopping the second week he was there. He knows that he can order everything through JARVIS, but whoever packs the groceries doesn't seem to have a thorough understanding for picking good produce, and something always gets left off the order. Everyone else is content to eat the groceries that appear in the kitchens of their individual apartments (and the snacks in the common areas), but Phil likes to get his own food. 

He’s on his way to Trader Joe’s when he hears the screeching, the tell-tale noise of a truck slamming on the brakes followed by metal smashing into metal. He’s one quarter into turning around to see if he needs to call 911 when the truck jumps the curb and runs him over.  
He has a brief thought of “not again” and then everything goes black.

\---

When he wakes up, his mother is sitting next to him. 

Since his mother passed away five years ago, this is more than a little disconcerting. 

Phil sits up slowly. “Am I dead?”

“Not yet, dear.” His mother pats his hand gently. She was (is?) a very tactile person with her affection, where Phil is not, and hand-pats are something they settled on when he was in high school. “But you are dying. And you need to decide if you are going to fight to live, or let yourself go.” 

Huh.

“And you’re here to… provide advice?” 

“I’m here to help. It’s a standard part of angel training, and in your case we thought that someone who knows you might get a better reception.” 

She’s not wrong. 

“We know that you’re feeling unimportant, and that your contributions don’t matter,” she continues. “So I’m going to show you what the world would look like if you’d never been born.”

Phil opens his mouth to ask a question, but the edges of his vision go fuzzy and-

\---

When he wakes up, they’re in New York City. He thinks.

It looks like the aftermath of the Chitauri multiplied, as though the battle had been fought over the entire city. He sees no clean-up crews, no signs of life at all, and when he turns to his mother she says, “Tony Stark wasn't around to redirect the nuclear missile. It hit the city.” 

Phil stares at her. “What- wait- hold on, are we going to get radiation poisoning?”

“You’re dying and I’m already dead. Nothing you see on this trip can hurt you.” 

They walk down the block a little, and now that Phil is looking he can see the signs, the spray-painted radiation symbols and the discarded surgical masks strewn about the street. “Why wasn’t Tony here?” 

“Let’s talk about the Avengers one by one, shall we?” 

\---

Phil blinks, and suddenly they’re in Tony’s house in Malibu, except-

Except it doesn't’t look like Tony’s house, not really. The furniture is the same, but it’s too somber and quiet, and on closer inspection there is a fine layer of dust covering everything. 

“Without you, Tony never learned to trust SHIELD,” his mother says quietly. He still survived the fight with Stane, but Nick didn't learn about the palladium poisoning until it was too late.”

Phil inhales sharply, surprised at the emotion that floods through him. He’d known that Tony was sick, of course, even that he was dying, but he’d never seriously considered that he might not pull through. “Natasha couldn't help him?”

“Natasha wasn't here.” 

Phil’s brow furrows. “Where was she?”

“Natasha was never recruited into SHIELD. The supervising agent who gave Clint Barton the kill order wasn't willing to compromise. She died almost fifteen years ago.” 

Phil has to take a moment to process that, to imagine SHIELD without Natasha. He begins to think about the other Avengers, to try to distract himself, then realizes, “We never brought Banner in, did we?”

His mother shakes her head. “Nick sent another agent after him, but they weren't able to persuade him to come in peacefully- and they certainly weren't a match for the Hulk. He’s still on the run.” 

That’s sad, but not as terribly surprising. Sending Natasha to bring in Banner had been something of a long shot, and he can’t imagine any of the other SHIELD agents being successful.

Phil nods. “Thor?” 

“His story is much the same - he was banished to Earth by his father, and learned the error of his ways by meeting Jane Foster and fighting the Destroyer. But he doesn't get along with Jasper as well as he does with you, and when Loki invaded he did not perceive SHIELD as helpful, or worthy of his attention. He fought Loki in New York but was unable to defeat the Chitauri on his own.”

“And without Iron Man, Hulk, and Black Widow, it’s no wonder he lost,” Phil says. “Captain Rogers?” 

“Tony Stark’s unexpected death, and the ensuing frenzy to secure the Iron Man suits, diverted SHIELD resources away from the search. His body hasn't’t been found.”

“So he’s alive, just not… awake.” 

Phil has been putting off asking about the final Avenger, his best friend (even if Clint doesn't realize how highly Phil thinks of him). His mother leads him over to the couch, and waits until they are both seated before she explains.

“When Clint was ordered to kill Natasha, he did it - he had no other choice - but three months later he went off the grid. Standard search protocols were initiated, but he got out of the country under an assumed name. He started taking mercenary jobs to keep himself busy, and then one of his contacts handed him over to the FSB. They tortured him for information about SHIELD, and when they couldn't get anything more out of him, they killed him.” 

This- this is harder to hear than all the other news combined. Clint is (was) so strong, so well trained in interrogation resistance, and he can’t imagine that he would have given anything up about SHIELD, even after he defected. They must have hurt him incredibly badly. 

“So there really are no Avengers,” he says dully. There are tears tracking down his cheeks, and normally he’d be embarrassed, but it’s his mother and she’s just told him that the world has practically ended because he wasn't there to save it. 

“They didn't have anything to bring them together,” she says softly, drawing him closer until his head drops onto her shoulder. 

\---

After that, the choice is easy.

\---

The choice may have been easy, but waking up is a _bitch_. 

He regains consciousness as the paramedics are hoisting him into the back of an ambulance. His ears are ringing and there’s blood dripping into his eye, but he can see Clint’s wide eyes peering over someone’s shoulder. He rasps out Clint’s name, and Clint takes a shaky breath and says, “I’ll meet you at the hospital.” 

He passes out again during the ambulance ride and fades in and out during the preliminary examination, then succumbs to darkness when they put him under for surgery. 

The next time he wakes up, he’s in a hospital bed with ten different machines attached to him and Clint curled up in a chair by his bedside. 

“Hey,” he rasps out.

Clint jumps, nearly knocking his chair over. “Hey, I- you’re awake. I’ll get the nurse.”

“Wait,” Phil says, reaching for him. 

Clint looks incredibly confused, but steps closer until Phil can grab his hand, pulling it up to his chest and holding on to it tightly. “Just stay with me, for a minute.” 

Clint still looks confused, but he carefully squeezes Phil’s hand back. “Thought we lost you there, Phil.” 

Phil smiles. “I’m not going anywhere.”


End file.
